Published 4:00 am, Sunday, February 16, 2003

Tracy Pollan with her husband, Michael J. Fox: Her No. 1 priority is being a wife and mom.

Tracy Pollan with her husband, Michael J. Fox: Her No. 1 priority is being a wife and mom.

No resisting '1st to Die' / Detective role lures Pollan away from her nest

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2003-02-16 04:00:00 PDT Los Angeles -- Even by showbiz standards, the scene last month at Bliss, a West Hollywood nightclub, seemed to shape up as a full-blown freak show. NBC Entertainment president Jeff Zucker was rigged up to a lie detector -- the kind used on the network's reality show "Meet My Folks" -- and fielded questions from random partygoers while starlets, producers and assorted creative types prowled the premises snacking on eclairs and cosmopolitans.

Standing quietly in a corner: Tracy Pollan. As she sipped a glass of chilled cranberry juice, the actress, outfitted in a glittering all-Celine ensemble, surveyed the proceedings. She doesn't normally spend much time in noisy hot spots, dressed to the nines.

"Usually, it's a ponytail and sweat suit," said Pollan, describing her more familiar role of homemaker, wife and mother.

Yet here she is, 2,400 miles away from the New York home she shares with her husband, Michael J. Fox, and their four children, winding up a whirlwind promotional tour for "1st to Die." The three-hour TV movie, adapted from James Patterson's best-selling mystery novel, stars Pollan as homicide detective Lindsay Boxer. Aided by a posse of savvy girlfriends (played by Pam Grier, Carly Pope, Angie Everhart, Sean Young and Megan Gallagher), Boxer grapples with a potentially fatal disease while tracking down a serial killer who's been murdering newlyweds. Co-starring Gil Bellows and Robert Patrick, "1st to Die" opens with an apparently suicidal Boxer as she puts a pistol to her head.

"They really put this character through the ringer," said Pollan, who first encountered the grisly story during a summer vacation with her family. "I'd just had a baby and was taking a bit of a break with the kids. I was not ready to go back to work."

Pollan's agent persuaded her to take a look at "1st to Die" anyway. "I got the script and thought, well, I'll just read a little bit now and read the rest later," Pollan recalls. "I picked it up, started reading, and didn't put it down until I was finished. It keeps you on the edge of your seat because you don't really know exactly what's going to happen until the very end. I realized I'd regret it if I passed this up."

Pollan was already a fan of the films "Along Came a Spider" and "Kiss the Girls," featuring Patterson's fictional creation Detective Alex Cross. "1st to Die" kicked off another Patterson franchise featuring the "Women's Murder Club. "

"James Patterson has a way with female characters," Pollan said. "He understands women in a way that a lot of male writers don't. What's different about Boxer is, she's so strong -- this big-city detective living in a man's world -- but at the same time, you see the softer side, through relationships with her best friend, Pam Grier, and the other women in the movie."

Adding an element of personal jeopardy, Pollan explained, is "the fact that Boxer is dealing with such a major health crisis, but isn't able to share that.

She still has to do a good job and not be vulnerable."

Pollan dealt with precisely those kinds of issues in real life. In 1998, Fox went public about his struggle with Parkinson's disease after contending with the illness privately for years.

"It's not that I'm necessarily looking for things that are so dark and emotional," Pollan said. "But if I see something where the character goes through enormous change, it's very appealing to play all those levels, and that is probably going to involve some dark moments."

Pollan developed her attraction to meaty roles while studying at the famed Actors Studio in New York. In 1985, Pollan met Fox when she played his girlfriend on the sitcom "Family Ties." Through the '90s, Pollan, when she wasn't busy with family life, focused on dramatic vehicles, earning a 2000 Emmy nomination for a guest appearance on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."

As for the psychotic antagonist that drives the "1st to Die" story line, Pollan noted that the public can't seem to get enough of serial killers, at least in fictional guise.

"People are fascinated because there's a real psychological component to these crimes. You have to wonder, 'What kind of mind could methodically go and seek people out?' I guess everybody has a dark side, so to study somebody who's actually acting on it is really creepy, kind of like watching an accident."

Portraying Boxer was "physically and emotionally draining," Pollan said, but she couldn't resist the project, even if it meant time away from the family.

"When something's got to give, family always wins. I couldn't live with myself if it was the other way," Pollan said.

Still, when a role like Boxer comes along, Pollan figures out how to strike a balance. For the 40-day "1st To Die" shoot in Vancouver, she brought her baby daughter to the set; the rest of the family visited for a month.

"I get so much out of being married and raising my kids -- that's really important to me," Pollan said. "When I start to get that creative itch, I tell (the kids) it's really important to have a passion in your life that's your own and doesn't involve anybody else. I want them to be able to find that in their own lives as well."

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